Lucky Ones
by WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: Apocafic. When a deadly virus spreads globally, and Eric falls ill, Calleigh and Eric have to make some decisions that could affect the rest of their lives. Calleigh/Eric.
1. un

**Author's Note**: _I started writing this back in the fall, so it doesn't take much of season eight into consideration. Eric/Calleigh._

_Warning: character death, both of original characters and eventually CSIs as well. It's the apocalypse._

* * *

The lines outside of the hospitals stretched on for hours, sick people nearly melting into the pavement as the scorching sun beat down on them. Sweaty children curled up against their parents' chests, crying for comfort, for someone to ease their pain.

"No, sir, all of our beds are full," the exasperated emergency room nurse said to a father carrying his young daughter. "There's nothing we can do, I'm sorry."

"There _has_ to be something you can do! You're _doctors_ for crying out loud!" the father exclaimed, slamming his fist on the desk, which startled his daughter into a fresh round of tears. "Maddie, don't cry, daddy's going to make it all better."

The nurse looked over at Maddie. "_Sir_, every hospital in Miami is completely full."

"_Ma'am_, my daughter is sick, and I want you and your crack team of doctors to heal her."

She shook her head and let out a very audible sigh. "You and every other citizen of Miami, from the looks of things."

* * *

Calleigh laid cool cloths across Eric's face as she watched him wake up from a few fitful hours of sleep. "Hey," she said, leaning over him. "How're you feeling?"

He blinked his eyes open and looked up at her. "Calleigh, you really don't need to play nurse, you know. You're one of the lucky ones." He had taken ill a few days before, and had been confined to Calleigh's couch since. She hadn't let him out of her sight since.

"_Lucky_?" she snorted. "I'm not lucky."

"You're one of the only people in Miami who aren't sick right now." They had caught a news report a few nights before regarding the quickly spreading disease. The experts at the CDC were calling it the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, while the fire-and-brimstone preachers waving their fists in their pulpits were calling it God's wrath upon humanity.

"I'm not lucky if you're sick," she said, pressing another cool cloth to his face. "You'll just have to put up with Nurse Calleigh."

Eric smiled and reached up for her hair. "If I wasn't so sick, you'd be against these couch cushions right now," he said, grabbing one lock between his fingers. "It _would_ be the best medicine."

She smiled, stood up and brushed carpet fibers off of her pants leg. "You should get some rest. Then we can talk about other uses for the cushions." Walking into the other room, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number. "Horatio?" she asked, as she heard someone on the other end pick up.

"No, honey, it's Alexx," the voice said, hesitating slightly before continuing. "Horatio is sick."

* * *

"As always, we have been dedicated to bringing the most up-to-date news into your households," the young female CNN anchor said, staring straight into the camera, reading off the teleprompter. "As of midnight Eastern tonight, however, due to the pandemic, we will be going off air indefinitely."

She fumbled around below her as they shifted to a correspondent in Afghanistan's perspective on how the pandemic was affecting the remote mountainous regions. Finding what she was searching for, she caressed the cool metal of the gun's cylinder. It wasn't the ideal situation, but she knew all of the symptoms from the reporting she had done over the past few days, and she had them all: raging fever, profuse sweating, limp muscles, labored breathing, vomiting, and a decreased heart rate. Her sister, a registered nurse, had been the one to confirm her greatest fear.

No disease would take her. She had always been a fighter, both in her personal life and in her career, but she wanted to have her fate in her own hands. Not in the hands of some insane disease that didn't even have a name as of yet.

Easing the trigger backward, she took in a deep, painful breath and thought of her young son one last time.

"I'm sorry, Caleb," she whispered, and then she let go.

* * *

Natalia turned on her television as she settled in from work, throwing her feet up on the ottoman. Horatio was very ill, and Calleigh had taken a leave of indefinite absence to tend to Eric's every need. Which, this all ultimately meant that her, Jesse, Ryan and Walter had to form a motley band of crime scene investigators. She shuddered as she remembered the carnage they had seen earlier that day when they were called into a hospital. Crazed patient pulled a gun in a crowded emergency room, killing six and injuring seventeen others before turning the gun on himself. Sometimes she _really_ hated her job. Right now was one of those times.

She flexed her toes and flipped through the channel listing. The world was _so _depressing these days; she didn't have _any_ desire to watch the news, for fear of seeing more and more news reports about things she was tired of hearing about. "Independence Day, 28 Days Later, Jericho," she muttered, glaring at her television. Even the movies and television shows currently showing were more like someone's idea of a sick joke than anything else. She settled on an old rerun of Gilligan's Island and settled back in her recliner. Now _this_ was better. A tropical island, no death, and a half hour of mindless entertainment. If only she could be stranded on an island right now. That would be nice.

* * *

The news reporter at WFOR flipped through her pages of notes and grimaced. A massacre had taken place at South Miami Hospital, an up-and-coming CNN anchor had shot herself in the studio (thank God the cameras were off her, the reporter thought), there were violent riots across the globe, stock markets were tanking, and no one had _any_ idea what was causing the pandemic. It was _not_ a good day to be in the business of reporting news. But, if she chose not to report the bad news, there'd be no good news to report, and everyone would be out of luck. Plus, it wouldn't be fair; _especially_ considering her co-anchor was one of the lucky ones who managed to get a hospital bed.

"Live from Miami, this is WFOR News at Eleven. I'm Karen Trenton, Rob is off tonight," she said as the cameras switched onto her. "Our lead story tonight…"

* * *

Alexx peeked into Horatio's hospital room. "Are you feeling any better?" she asked, looking at his vitals. No change since the last time she had come in.

He let out a groan and threw his head back against the pillows. "No," he said, jerking a tube as he moved. "Not at all. Is the rest of the team doing well?"

"They're all doing fine," she said, thinking of Eric. Normally, she didn't like lying, especially to Horatio. But, this was a different situation than they were all used to. The normal rules didn't apply when the entire world population could be dead in a month, if the infection rate kept up. She figured she'd let him believe that everyone was healthy. No need for any additional stress when his body would need to be fighting the battle of a lifetime.

"Good," he said, licking his dry lips. Dehydration was beginning to set in, he thought miserably. This was _definitely_ the most sick he had ever been. "Alexx?"

"Yeah?"

"Make sure that they stay that way." He let out a deep breath and closed his eyes, sinking into a dreamless slumber.

She didn't respond, only turned to leave the room. Lying to make a sick man feel better was one thing. Making promises that she, nor anyone else, had any way of keeping was another thing all together.

-_to be continued_-


	2. deux

Calleigh made her way out of her bedroom that night and watched Eric fitfully thrash on the couch. This wasn't good. This _really_ wasn't good. She was wondering just how contagious this was, and considering how much contact she had had with him – nothing more than cloths to the face, but with the unknown factors of the virus, even that could cause transmission – she'd be a prime candidate for infection. She had two options, neither of which were that appealing to her. Either she could continue to treat Eric as she had, and run a high risk of infection herself, or she could stop treating him and let the disease run its course. Based on the snippets of news reports she had caught over the past few days, this would mean almost certain death. Then again, it wasn't as though there were many reports of people who had been infected surviving as it was.

She mindlessly twisted the washcloth in her hands. Ever since they had started dating, and even when he had left the lab – though they picked up their relationship basically from where it had dropped off there for a while – she had pictured the white picket fence routine. Prior to this, she had fully imagined, barring the apocalypse or her shooting at him again, that they'd get married, have kids, and grow old together, dying in each other's arms. There _was_, of course, still the possibility that they could die in each other's arms. Just…it wouldn't be when they were old, and it would be _long_ before they were ready to face that reality.

Running the washcloth through cold water, she let out a sigh. She knew what she had to do. It was for the best for both of them. He would never want her to put her life on the line, but he meant too much to her for her to do anything differently.

"Eric?" she asked, taking the old, dry cloth off his face and replacing it with the fresh one. "You awake?"

"Calleigh?" he asked in reply, blindly reaching a hand out to her.

She grasped his hand in both of hers, feeling the blood pumping through his palm. "I'm never leaving your side again."

"But you'll get _sick_," he said, matter-of-factly. He wasn't stupid. He had seen the news reports just as much as she had, if not a little more. What he did when she was catching the few precious moments of sleep she could was his business, and his business was watching as much CNN as possible.

She grimaced, hating to hear the words. "I know," she replied, grasping tighter, her eyes wide with a mixture of anxiety and a strange form of confidence. "I'm ready to face whatever comes our way. _Together_."

"Oh, Calleigh," he said, pulling her close, careful not to breathe directly on her in fear of infecting her – although, she had had so much exposure to him that she was unsure she could even be infected by him anymore. "I love you, you know that."

"I love you too," she murmured and found it in her to smile for the first time in days. They had each other.

* * *

If Calleigh was being completely honest with herself, and she probably was, come to think of it, she had lost track of the number of days since the pandemic had first erupted, and taken Eric as one of the infected. It seemed as though every time she thought Eric's condition was taking a turn for the better _or_ for the worse, he'd stabilize back to where he had been - which was good, seeing as how he wasn't dead, but also bad, seeing as how he wasn't getting any better. She hadn't left his side for more than a brief time since then, and she had managed, by some stroke of luck, to avoid being infected.

There were people, however, that weren't as lucky. Horatio had been the first of the old team to die, though, from what Alexx had told Calleigh in the tearful phone call the two women had shared, he went peacefully, in his sleep. Every day, as she watched the news – she had to limit it to one newscast a day, for her sanity – she noticed that the newscasters were suspiciously changing around, as the morning newscasters did the six o'clock evening news, until one day, instead of the normally scheduled newscast, there was a black screen stating that for the foreseeable future, there would be no newscasts on WFOR.

That was the day when Calleigh realized just how serious this all was. Losing Horatio had been a blow to the team, to be sure. And when she heard from Alexx that Ryan had died too, she and Eric both mourned him in their own way. The team, once strong and steady, was crumbling around them. Then, one day, the phone calls, previously a beacon of stability and comfort and a reminder of what their life was like before, stopped coming entirely.

If things were not serious before, they were absolutely _dire_ now.

* * *

The last flight leaving Miami for the week took off, leaving Natalia staring out the terminal window. It had been a long shot, she knew that much, but she _had_ to get out of Florida. There was _no_ way she was staying on a _peninsula_ of all things. Best to move inland.

A fellow stranded passenger tapped her on the shoulder. "You miss the flight too?" the stranger asked.

Natalia nodded. "Yeah."

"A few of us are forming a caravan and going to protest in D.C. Want to join?"

Protesting wasn't really her thing, especially when the guy was leaving out what they were even protesting _about_ - but the other part of it _definitely_ was her thing. "I'm in."

* * *

"Eric?" Calleigh asked groggily. Looking up at him from her position on the floor, she blinked her eyes open. "What are you doing?"

He was standing in the middle of her living room, solely clad in his boxers, and seemed to be focused on something in the distance. "We _have_ to get out of here," he said, turning to face her. "We're both going to die if we stay here."

"And where do you suggest we go?" she asked, running her hand along the seam of the blanket that had previously draped over Eric. "It's not exactly safe anywhere, and unless you have a brilliant idea to abscond with a boat…"

"That's why," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her off the floor and into a standing position. "We go underground."

"Underground?" She wrinkled her nose. Not because she was totally aghast at the idea of living underground, but were there even any places that they could find, without digging one for themselves?

"Yes, _underground_. I remember an old fallout shelter near where I grew up."

"And you suggest that we camp out in there?"

"Unless you have a better idea? Yes, until things get better, at least."

She paused for a moment. As far as outlandish ideas went, this one had some semblance of merit and thought put into it. And the boat would be a _horrible_ idea anyway. "Sure," she said, shrugging slightly. "What do we have to lose?"

"_Your lives_," an ominous voice inside her said in a chilling whisper. She shook off the whisper as paranoia, but a shiver ran up her spine all the same. Paranoia or not, she knew it was a risk under the best of conditions. And this was _not_ the best of conditions under _any_ stretch of the word.

-_to be continued_-


End file.
